


To Sleep...

by molo (esteefee)



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: April Showers Challenge, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-03
Updated: 2006-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteefee/pseuds/molo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch watches Starsky sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Sleep...

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to CC for the lightning beta.

I watch him sometimes while he's sleeping.

I'm pretty sure Starsky doesn't know about it. I may be a klutz at times, but when I need to, I can move really quietly. Like a ghost.

Sometimes I feel like one, as if I died when he did, and I am haunting someone else's life. Some other Hutch whose partner lived, and is healing, here in the apartment they are sharing, being watched over by a ghost.

Have you ever noticed how some people are loud sleepers? Starsky always was. When he'd curl up in the front seat on stakeout to catch some Zs, he'd always move around a lot, mumbling things. Some of it was interesting. He murmured something once about the Germans hiding all the evidence. Crazy stuff. And he'd always flail his arms in his sleep, sometimes whacking me a good one on the side of the head.

So, I learned to duck.

But that was before. Before Gunther. Before pain changed the way he sleeps now, so still and quiet in the unkind moonlight. I've been watching him for a while, marking the slow, shallow lifting of his scarred chest. Sometimes his breath catches, and I know it's hurting him, even in his sleep. Even then, he has no rest from the pain.

He made me watch that Star Trek episode once, the one where the girl puts her hands on Dr. McCoy and takes his wounds onto her own body, healing him, taking all his pain. I think about that now, watching Starsky, and my envy pushes up in my throat, and I almost make a sound.

I have to be quiet. Can't risk waking him. I would lose my watching privileges for sure. Not to mention the chunk he would take out of my hide. I know I'm already making him crazy day to day, hovering next to him in this too-small space. He puts up with it only because he knows what it's like. I swear, one time after a deadly virus almost took me out, it was like we were handcuffed together for a while.

But this has been more than a week or two. It's been a month since he got out of the hospital, and still I need to be around him all the time. I guess I never was much good at believing in any good fortune. Seems like life usually hands you prizes just to see your face when it takes them away again.

With Gillian, I could accept it. With Starsky—never.

He moves now, trying to roll over, but then falls onto his back again as if his body is reminding him he only has one comfortable sleeping position. He sleeps without a shirt, because the material catches at his scars, and I keep my apartment warm for him, so he doesn't even have to use the top sheet.

I should go. It's been too long, and if he's getting restless it probably means he'll wake up soon and need to take a pain pill. He still has to do that on his bad days. I stand up quietly, so quietly that I hear it when he whispers something in his sleep.

"Hush," it sounds like.

My heart is pounding louder than my steps as I slip away.

ooOoo

A few weeks later I'm drinking my morning coffee and doing the crossword when Starsky stumbles out toward the bathroom. He had some good sleep last night. More than you could say about me, but I don't need much anyway. It's not like I'm on the streets these days. I do half-days at work, Dobey grumbling in my ear constantly about the holes in his team, but the first time he suggested I take a case and Starsky heard about it, the expression on his face almost floored me. So much fear. For me, I guess. And also hurt, and yearning, and jealousy, and a lot of other unhappy stuff.

So, I told Dobey to go hang. Well, in so many words, anyway. He's been pretty good about it, but I've got him over a barrel. See, I'd quit in a heartbeat to keep that expression off of Starsky's face. And the captain knows it.

Starsky finally comes out of the shower, his body damp and his short hair dripping. He had it chopped off when he was in the hospital because it was such a pain to wash it while he was bedridden.

I kind of prefer it short, to tell you the truth. He looks younger—like he did when we first met. And I need that reminder, because everything else that has gone down in the past year has aged us beyond belief.

He moves pretty good as he heads to the bedroom to get some clothes on. He hasn't said 'good morning' yet, but I don't anticipate a greeting until he's had that first cup.

It's strange, us living together. I always thought he would be a terrible roommate, but he's not. He's not loud, except when he's humming. Or when he's doing his exercises—then he cranks up the hi-fi and I go out onto the deck and make busy with my plants.

He's got the bed, of course, and I bought a foldaway sofa to replace my couch. Sound travels well in the apartment, and the foldaway squeaks like a mother, so when I'm lying there awake, I try to keep quiet and not move around too much, though there's a humpy part in the middle that's death on my back. I might need a month's worth of traction after Starsky moves out.

He's moving back to his place next week. He doesn't really need me anymore. He's on his way to full independence now.

If only I were.

I don't know what I'll do after a bad nightmare if I can't watch him sleep.

ooOoo

Tonight he has a hard-on. It doesn't embarrass me, of course. I've seen Starsky in almost every state imaginable, with the exception of the throes of passion. I've seen him morning hard, and I've seen him cold and shriveled from a skinny dip in a frigid lake. I've seen him happy beyond belief, or so overcome by grief that an ocean couldn't have swallowed it. I've seen him cockier than a turkey the week before Thanksgiving, and I've seen him so filled with remorse and self-loathing that I needed a forklift to haul him up again. I've seen him a hundred different ways.

I've even seen him dead.

You can imagine how much fun that was—those twenty-two seconds that yawned like a tunnel into the dark—when he went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital after the shooting. That was my least favorite look on him, if you want to know the truth. I think if I ever had to see it again I would lose my mind.

Maybe I've already lost it, because I'm sitting by my bed at two in the morning watching my partner sleep.

It was another dream that woke me, of course, the sweat cold on my skin. I never seem to remember any good dreams anymore, just the ones where Starsky dies again, but this time they can't bring him back. Those are bad enough, but worse—sometimes he lives, maimed, unable to move, hating life. And sometimes he's physically how he is now, but angry with me, so angry he's like a boiling black cloud rolling toward me, thundering "You didn't stop it. Why didn't you _stop_ it from happening?"

Or the worst of all—when I'm furious at _him_ , and I'm shaking him, hurting him, tearing the healing flesh in my rage because _goddammit_ , why didn't he get _down_?

The days are better than the nights, but not by much. Because during the day I have to hide things. Can't show how every little achievement, every regained inch of mobility or extra sit-up, makes me want to hug him and pat him on the back like one of Terry's special kids finally making a free throw. I'm sure _that_ would go over like a lead balloon.

And I'm always torn between the pride and my doubts, my sinking fear he's damaged beyond repair, that no number of sit-ups or push-ups or glasses of orange juice or careful rub-downs will return him to himself. Return _us._

I sure the hell can't show him that.

When I wake up from one of the bad ones, sick to my stomach, I have to get up and see the _now_ , sleeping quietly. I need this time, time to look at him, unnoticed, and let it show on my face, how badly I want him back and how afraid I am he'll never get there. I need to be able to look at his body and accept the changes, without him seeing how they affect me. Look at the scarred skin and the fragile frame and think, _This is Starsky. This is Starsky now._

So, I watch.

He's on his side, and the moonlight has turned his chest into a war-torn field, shadowing the knots of his scars and the lumps of uneven, healing muscle.

His erection has managed to escape through the slit in his underwear. It draws my eyes away from the broken landscape of his chest—not because I lean that way, but because it's a sign of healing, of life. I don't know what he's dreaming, but his dreams must be better than mine have been lately.

He makes a sound, sort of a clicking yawn, and I pull my focus from his groin to find his eyes are half open, looking at me.

I can feel the heat burning its way up my neck. I'm caught. He's caught me watching him at last. I always knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I still don't know what to say. I forgot to have something ready.

"What're you doing?" he says, sounding fuzzy. There's no pain in his voice, and I'm glad of that, at least.

"Watching you," I say. Because it's the truth, and because lying to him out loud just isn't an option. Not anymore. Maybe two months ago it had been, but then, two months ago we weren't getting along so well, and that was probably one reason why.

"What're _you_ doing?" I ask him, trying to be funny. Also, hoping he isn't quite awake enough to tear me a new one for watching over him.

"I was sleepin'...dreamin'."

It occurs to me he must not have seen where my eyes had been staring, because he still seems unaware his erection is sticking out of his shorts. And it makes me feel good he's that relaxed around me, that he's so damned...comfortable.

"What were you dreaming?" I ask, figuring he'll treat me to a hot little scenario about his favorite night nurse, Nurse Millicent, she of the D-cup and the tendency to bend over to fluff his pillow so accommodatingly.

But he looks uncomfortable. "Nothin." Unfortunately, it seems to wake him up a little, because he says, "Why were you watching me?"

"I had a bad dream." I figure I don't need to say any more than that.

He gives me a look, and now I know he's fully awake, because even in the moonlight those eyes cut me like diamonds.

"Get them much?"

"Some." A tilt of his head forces me to admit, "A lot."

"Why didn't you say something?" He yawns and then reaches down to scratch his belly. It's at this point I think he realizes he's hanging out of his shorts, because he gets the weirdest look on his face, almost like he's been caught doing something. But if a guy had to feel guilty every time he woke up with an erection, the confessionals would be lined up from here to the Vatican.

Still, Starsky sits up and grabs the top sheet to cover up. And even though I'm glad to see how easily he pushes himself upright these days, with no sign of pain, I'm saddened to see him uncomfortable and self-conscious. I don't know why, but it feels like a rejection of some kind.

"I didn't want you to have to worry about it," I say. "You've got enough on your plate."

He looks puzzled for a second, as if he doesn't remember the question. Then he grimaces, his brows drawing dark and close like they get when he's facing someone down. "We still partners, or what?"

"Always." And that's God's truth. It's an extra one He wrote on the tablets, along with a bunch of other stuff that no one seems to bother to follow. But this is one commandment nothing can shake. Not three bullets, that's for sure, even if Starsky never spends another day on the streets.

Starsky gives a little smile, as if my response was one of the lectures I'm always giving him. He says, "So. Tell me what you were dreaming."

But it's hard. Hard to say it out loud when all I want to do is protect him, now that I've already failed the one critical time. I just breathe for a little while, and he waits. He's always good about that, because he knows how my tongue gets tripped up on this stuff, and I have to have the time to say it slow.

"You were on the hospital bed. Th-there were tubes everywhere—I could hardly see you—but I could see your eyes. Just your eyes, so scared of something that was about to happen. Then the doctors came, and they did things to you, t-terrible things. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't stop them. I stayed behind the glass, because if I didn't, I knew they would kill you."

"Youch." He frowns sympathetically. "Still, just a dream, huh, pal?"

I shake my head.

"What, it's not a dream?"

I shake my head again, but I can't say it just yet. The trembling has started in my hands, and I stuff them under my arms.

"It happened," I say. "It happened over and over, when you were in the coma. They had to...the shunts, and the pumps, and the tubes down your throat, in your body, everywhere, and they tied you down to keep you from...shit. You were tied down, and you were awake, but you weren't. I mean." I clench my hands. Starsky is staring at me, something strange in his eyes. Something I can't read, and now I wonder if I've made a mistake, but it's too late, it's rolling out of me like a rockslide.

"You don't remember. But they had to put a huge needle in your chest, a big bore needle, to drain all this fluid from around your l-lungs. That one was the worst, because you made these sounds, and I just _watched_...."

"I don't remember any of it." Starsky blinks slowly. "Is that what you dreamed?"

"No. No. In my dream you were wide awake the whole time, and screaming for me, the whole time just screaming my name."

There. It's done. I let out my breath, slowly, but it's shaky because my stomach is trembling. I can't look at Starsky right now. It's not that I think he will blame me for what happened—after all, it saved his life, didn't it? What fucking choice was there but to let them torture him?

No, it's because I feel so goddamned weak that I'm still dreaming about this. Can't let it go, like a little kid after seeing a monster movie. Only, in my dreams I'm the monster. That's what scares me.

"C'mere."

It doesn't register—what he's said—but he repeats it.

"Come here, Hutch."

I shake my head again. "I feel like an ass."

"Yeah? We'll, you're _my_ ass."

The phrasing catches me funny, and a laugh breaks from my throat unasked. But I don't get up. "Don't know what you think of me. Guess I'm just not as tough as you are."

He makes a surprised sound, and that makes me look. He's staring at me like I'm one brick shy.

"Because you're sure the hell not dreaming about it, Starsk," I explain. "Or even about getting shot full of holes. For chrissake, you sleep like a baby, night after night! At least, you do until your muscles stiffen up and you need that pill—"

"Night after night?" he repeats slowly. "How often has this been happening, Blintz?" He sounds pissed. "And I said come _here._ "

You don't fuck with Starsky when he uses that tone. Sure, sometimes I do anyway, but I wouldn't advise it as a course of action for the average mortal. And even I know when it's the right time to ride that edge. So, I get up and walk over to sit on the side of the bed.

He puts his right hand on my shoulder and shakes it once, gently. "How often, huh?"

"At first, once a week or so. But lately...lately it's gotten worse," I admit. "Ever since...."

He gives me another shake.

I rub my forehead, hiding behind my hand. "You're...leaving soon."

"Ah." The grip on my shoulder gentles a little.

My throat is tightening up. "I don't want you to. Don't want you to go."

He doesn't say anything for a long time. I'm willing to wait. Actually, I'm hoping he won't say anything at all. For example, about what a wimp his partner is for having nightmares, or about how goddamn soapy he's turned on him.

"You wanna know what I've been dreaming lately?" he says instead, his voice really soft.

I nod. He looks down, and those dark lashes of his are all I can see of his eyes. He's got longer eyelashes than any girl I've ever met. I'm not sure why I'm noticing that, all of a sudden.

I'm pretty sure the night can't get much crazier, but then he lays a doozy on me.

"Almost every night, you've been there in my dreams, Hutch."

Not nightmares. He hasn't been having nightmares, that much I know. I would've woken him from them.

A truly strange thought hits me. "How am I there?" I'm trying really hard not to think the thought. But while I'm waiting for Starsky to tell me more, it slips into the forefront of my mind—the image of Starsky's hard cock sticking out of his shorts. Suddenly the air feels too hot to breathe.

"Usually, I'm dreaming that you're taking care of me somehow."

I nod again. That makes sense, since I have been taking care of him a lot, even while he was still in the hospital.

His voice drops low, not quite whispering. "But also, sometimes you're...sometimes you're..."

"I'm...?" It's my turn to put a hand on his shoulder, but the muscles just tense under my fingers.

"Sometimes you're...you've got your arms around me."

"Oh." I don't drop my hand, and Starsky suddenly relaxes under it, as if the worst has passed.

"That's all you've got to say?"

"Well..." I clear my throat. "P-plenty of times I've done that—"

"That's not what I'm talking about," he breaks me off, sounding frustrated.

I sit there a second, even though I know he needs me to say something more. The problem is, I don't know what I mean to say. Because I don't know what to think, except, _Oh. **Oh**_ _._

"Maybe both our dreams are coming from the same place," I say slowly. I'm glad I'm looking into his eyes, because they're open so wide and they're so goddamn blue. I'd say Starsky's eyes are about as blue as his lashes are long.

Why am I thinking about that?

"I told you I don't want you to go," I say. "Maybe your dreams are because you want to stay."

He pulls back. I don't even realize how close he's been leaning until he pulls away like that.

"Don't," he says. "You can't pretend you didn't notice...when I was dreaming...."

I feel my face flush. "Yeah, I—"

"I was _hard_ , Hutch." He says it like he's talking to an idiot.

And maybe he is. Or maybe I just need a second.

"Just give me a damned second," I say.

I rub my hands on my thighs, because they're suddenly damp. In fact, I feel like I'm wading through a steam bath. But if my body knows what the fuck is going on, why is my mind still spinning away, pinging against the thoughts that want to come, but not stopping on any of them? I can't get settled in my head.

It takes me a long time, I think. Maybe the only reason Starsky is willing to wait is he's got nowhere else to go. But thank God he is, because when I finally look up, he's still there. Starsky's still there, and there's one thought that's finally settled, sunk in deep. The rest of them will have to take care of themselves later, because I've got the one for now, clutched hard in my mind.

I say it out loud. "I love you, you know?"

Starsky cocks his head, his eyes uncertain. "But...?"

I laugh, kind of shakily, but it feels good. God, it feels good. "If it's okay with you, buddy, that's everything."

He blinks once, slowly, as if trying to gauge what I mean, or if I really mean it.

"You saying what I think you're saying, or only what I _want_ to think you're saying?"

"Uh." After I untangle it, I nod and smile at him. "Yeah. What I said."

"What? What did you say?" He looks like he's about to explode.

"What you think!" I burst out. And then, because he's _still_ looking at me as if he doesn't believe me, and that angers me after I've told him everything there is to tell him while he hasn't said anything himself, I lean forward and I...I....

Well. I kiss him. I kiss _Starsky_ right on the lips. A good wet one, just so there can be no possibility of any further confusion. And because, Jesus, I like it. I like kissing Starsky.

And Starsky, wouldn't you know it, kisses me back. Hard. Demanding it. Like I've never been kissed before.

But I can only take _that_ for a very short time before I have to pull away from his mouth. The taste of him is about to make my brain fry every last circuit. Too little sleep, too much heartache, too many days of uncertainty, and now this.

I pull back, and he opens his eyes and tries to follow, and that gives me a jolt where I've never had one before, at least not with respect to my partner. And that just freaks me out more, and I put my hand up.

"Hang on. Hang on."

Starsky looks at me like I'm now two bricks shy and missing some important mortar. He starts to reach for me again and I say, "Buddy."

"You've got to be kidding." He looks astonished. "You can't _tell_ me you didn't like it."

He's that cocky, my partner. And it's one of the things I love about him—that he's willing to put his head down and just charge forward when sometimes, with some things, I need to hang back and think a little.

This is one of those times, and I see it take his face when he understands that it's not about how goddamned good a kisser he is, or how it felt to have his hand at the back of my neck, holding me there.

"Okay, Blintz," he says with a sigh, and this tiny smile of his that he gets sometimes when I've done something that amuses him in a particular way. I've never been sure what prompts it, but I love that smile.

And I want to kiss it right off his face.

But I also know my own limits, and I hit them about a lip-lock and a half ago.

"Just until I can f-figure this out," I say.

"Sure. Take your time," he says easily. Looking pretty smug, too, but that's okay. "You look like you could use some sleep."

"Sleep. Yeah." Suddenly it sounds like heaven. I get up slowly and look toward the foldaway.

"Why don't you stretch out right here?" He shifts over on the bed to leave a space for me. I look at his face, but there's nothing but concern there now.

"That way," he continues, "if you wake up, you won't have to sit in that damned chair all night."

So, I do. I slip under the top sheet right next to him, and he slides down and plumps a pillow for me, sticking it under my head, and lies down, turning toward me. My eyes can't help dropping down and, yeah, he's hard. Starsky is hard for me. It almost has me up and out to the safety of the sofa; not because I think he'll make moves on me, but because just knowing he needs something—anything—is bound to trigger my need to give it to him.

But he just pats my shoulder. "Go to sleep, Blondie."

I close my eyes, feeling him settle in closer next to me. His hand is still on my shoulder, but it's the only place we're touching. I wait until I hear that sigh he makes and I know he's closed his eyes. The moonlight is full on mine when I open them to look at him. I think, this is a much better way to watch him—up close. And so much more comfortable than that hard chair. This way I can watch him all night long.

But instead, I fall right to sleep.

And I don't dream.

 _Fin_.

November 3, 2006  
San Francisco, CA

**Author's Note:**

> It seems awfully rude to call on Sir William, but here is  
> the full quote from Hamlet (III, i, 65-67):
> 
> "To die, to sleep —  
> To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,  
> For in that sleep of death what dreams may come..."


End file.
